New York (US): The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is holding an emergency meeting on the Ukraine crisis on Tuesday morning. The emergency meeting will take place in the United Nations Security Council in New York.
Calling for restraint, India’s Permanent Representative to United Nations T.S. Tirumurti said, "The escalation of tension along the border of Ukraine with the Russian Federation is a matter of deep concern. These developments have the potential to undermine peace and security of the region."
"We strongly emphasize the vital need for all sides to maintain international peace and security by exercising the utmost restraint and intensifying diplomatic efforts to ensure that a mutually amicable solution is arrived at the earliest," he added.
Ambassador Tirumurti also emphasized the need to protect civilians caught in the middle of the conflict, including up to 20,000 Indian citizens, most of them students studying in Ukraine.
"The Safety and security of civilians essential. More than 20,000 Indian students and nationals live and study in different parts of Ukraine, including in its border areas. The well-being of Indians is of priority to us," Tirumurti said.
The US representative to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said that Putin's decision to recognise the rebel territories is clearly the basis of Russia's attempt to create a pretext for the further invasion of Ukraine.
“Russia's clear attack on Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty is unprovoked. It is an attack on Ukraine's status as a UN member state. It violates basic principles of international law,” the representative said at the UNSC meeting on Ukraine crisis.
The United States has sent its remaining diplomats in Ukraine to Poland 'for security reasons', state secretary Antony Blinken said. As the Ukraine crisis deepens, Blinken said that the department of state personnel, who had been moved from Kyiv to the western city of Lviv, will spend the night in Poland.
Russia's decision to recognize two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine as independent and order its army to launch a “peacekeeping operation” into the area has accelerated the crisis.
The move prompted the US to announce financial sanctions against rebel territories prohibiting new investment in the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) or Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) regions of Ukraine or "such other regions of Ukraine as may be determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State (collectively, the “Covered Regions”), by a United States person, wherever located."
